Advice/help required for case/motherboard issue

My son decided to build his own PC ( first timer), he has come across an issue and I’m trying to help him before he drives me nuts! Teenagers!

He bought the Corsair spec delta RGB case and a B450M DS3H motherboard which I believe is compatible (correct me if I’m wrong). It says to connect the 3 fans to a 12v RGB port but there isn’t one labelled on the motherboard. Any advice greatly received.

That Gigabyte board has 1 12v RGB header on it. It is just below the SYS_FAN1 header above the primary PCIe x16 slot just to the right of the USB_LAN and Audio blocks at the back of the mother board.

That’s where we have tried it (slot says LED CPU) but the case doesn’t seem to be lighting up or fans spinning on the front three so we thought maybe we’d got that wrong. Any ideas?

First, make sure you have the case lighting cable plugged into the LED header correctly (+12v pin matches on both).

 

You will need to install Gigabyte's RGB Fusion software to be able to control the LEDs on the case.

 

The fans are not powered by the LED cable or LED header on the motherboard. The fan power cables will need to be plugged into the fan headers on the motherboard or an aftermarket fan controller.

 

If you use the fan headers on the motherboard, you will need to go into BIOS on the motherboard to control the fan speed and temp curve, etc. for the fans.

 

If you use an aftermarket fan controller, you will use the control software that comes with that.

 

If your fans are RGB they will have two wires coming out of each one, one for RGB and the other for fan power and speed control.

Thank you for your help so far really appreciate it. The issue is now that we have 4 case fans but only 1 fan header remaining as cpu cooler connected to only other one. How can we sort this?

A common answer to this problem is a separate Fan Hub that you can buy. Its kind of like the power board/strip you probably have around your house that converts one power outlet into several. It converts one fan header into several.

 

I just bought this https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Cooling/Fan-Controllers/58505-SST-CPF04 one, but there are a few different ones around, Just google PWM fan hub.

 

 

 

Another option, since you've already started down the Corsair road, is a device Corsair call their "Commander Pro". This has 6 fan headers on it, plus room to power RGB lighting as well. (via other RGB control devices) Beware - this is the start of a slippery slope. Once you start with RGB fans you will find it hard to go back !!!

 

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Accessories-%7C-Parts/iCUE-CONTROLLERS/iCUE-Commander-PRO-Smart-RGB-Lighting-and-Fan-Speed-Controller/p/CL-9011110-WW

Edited May 1, 2020 by Salsiccia

Thank you for your response it is much appreciated. After much googling we had come across this as a possible solution. I did read that if using splitters (another solution) you were limited to the number of fans you could put onto it depending on the amps, does this apply when using one of these. Each fan is 0.38A and there are 4.

Sorry if these are dumb questions but first time Ive been involved in anything like this and don’t want to get it wrong and damage anything. It also said that with other solutions you can’t control the speed of the fans is that right if using one of these and if it does , what does that mean and does it matter.

The vast majority of motherboard fan headers are only rated up to 1 amp total on the fan header.

 

You list your fans as .38 amp each so two of those fans at most on one motherboard fan header.

 

You also have to account for fan start up draw. Fans will take a bit more juice to get started spinning from a dead stop. This momentary spike in amp draw from the fan is not usually listed in the fans specs, just the amp draw while already running.

 

I would strongly suggest a aftermarket fan hub........

There is no such thing as dumb questions - only dumb answers :-) So ask away !

 

And you are right, fan splitters is a route you need to be careful of as you can't do that indefinitely. You do have to watch the amps. There is wisdom on here around using the Commander Pro I mentioned earlier that says you can use a 2-way fan splitter on that, but many people have reported problems when using 3-way fan splitters so try not to use them. There is also the total limit to watch out for, plus the start up draw mentioned above So using a separately powered fan hub, while being slightly more annoying from a cable management point of view, is a cleaner way. You do only have 4 fans though - at this stage, so a splitter would be a good choice for you at this point, just be mindful that as your needs/wants grow ........